


it's you it's you it's all for you

by orphan_account



Series: kill this love [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Light Angst, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Robert Baratheon/Lyanna Stark, POV Lyanna Stark, Poor Life Choices, Rhaegar Targaryen Being an Asshole, kind of emotionally abusive relationships?, like really really mild, say it with me: lyanna stark's actions were her own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24900358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The first time she met Rhaegar, she thought he was a god. Perhaps he'd been the devil instead.
Relationships: Elia Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen (implied), Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Series: kill this love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1801837
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	it's you it's you it's all for you

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell that I wrote the last few parts at literally 4am?? 
> 
> anyway, i (once again) feel really insecure about this fic, but hEY i'm gonna post it all the same (:
> 
> enjoy!

**it’s you it’s you it’s all for you;**

**/**

“I think I might love you,” Lyanna murmurs. The words barely manage their way through the ecstasy coating her tongue like maple syrup, but she still means them with all the fire and brimstone in her heart.

Rhaegar’s chest heaves with lust. His breath is warm against her skin. A moment of silence passes before his hands—calloused from all the battles he’s won—dig into her shoulders like they’re made of butter and his lips curl into a strange smile, as though she’s said something particularly amusing.

“Do you enjoy this, Lya?” he asks in a husky breath. His white-blonde hair is wet and dripping with heat as he stares at her. “Do you want so desperately to be mine?”

She’s never seen him like this before, has never sliced into his boundaries deep enough to see past the aching reflection of the prince everyone thinks he is. He’s always responded to her subtle, bashful teases with little more than distracted fondness. But tonight, is different. Special. Tonight, he looks at her with much more than a faint blush of possessive infatuation, looks at her the way she’s seen him look at Elia Martell once before.

“Yes,” she says breathlessly. Being his sounds nice, especially now, when she’s aching in all the places that he always makes her ache in, and she _needs_ this. She needs it more than she’s needed anything else before. _“Gods,_ Rhaegar, _yes.”_

He swoops down, presses his open-mouthed desire against her flushed skin, bites her lips and then bites her to pieces. Lyanna lets him do what he wants, just as she always has, and melts comfortably against the bed when he licks at her collarbone and grins under a purple gaze. He’s teasing her, of course. It’s one of his favorite things to do, watching her squirm and pout and _beg._ She thinks it might have something to do with control, might be about taking it and leaving her with nothing but a mocking semblance of it, and that’s _fine_. Fine, fine, fine. If this is how it feels to lose everything to Rhaegar, then that’s perfectly fine.

And besides—Lyanna already knows all about losing things. The first time Rhaegar kissed her like this, she lost her maidenhood, left it buried, deep, somewhere between stolen kisses and all the lies she told Ned after coming back home to Winterfell. She lost time, lost every caramel-sweet glimpse of a _(happy)_ future she might’ve had with Robert, underneath layers of his candle-burnt letters, and she lost light-bound memories of being something more than this, of swordfights and battles and laughing wicked knights playing with sticks in the forests of Winterfell. She has loss mapped on the back of her hand. That’s fine too.

“Beautiful,” Rhaegar breathes, a small smile on his lips as he stares down at her, his eyes sparkling like the constellations. “You’re beautiful.”

A giggle escapes Lyanna’s mouth. “That’s a lazy way to describe me,” she reproaches, trailing her hands down his abdomen. “You are—” she pauses to lick her lips and forget how dry her throat is, “—everything. You are the world and the stars. Robert has never held me as you do, Rhaegar.”

At the mention of her betrothed, Rhaegar stills. His hand freezes on the seams of her dress and he pulls away slowly, glancing away from her. Something is there in his eyes that wasn’t there just a moment ago, and Lyanna frowns. Rhaegar _has_ left her edging before, has built her up for hours just to let her drop, strings cut, into a deep pool of dissatisfaction, and she knows all about crashing, too, after a high like that, knows how it feels to be aching for just the faintest touch of his hands yet being denied the pleasure again and again. It’s not a nice experience. Actually, it’s agonizing, having to calm herself down after that and swallow the liquid heat pooling just beneath her stomach—but it’s not as if she can force Rhaegar to go through with it if he doesn’t want to.

“My prince?”

Rhaegar’s eyes flick to her slowly. “Robert Baratheon,” he mumbles to himself, though she can hear him just perfectly. “Do you think you might love him, too?”

It’s easy to recognize the thinly veiled contempt in Rhaegar’s voice, the bittersweet undertone of mockery that’s always there in everything he says when it comes to Robert.

“I’ve not thought about it,” she admits, smothering her thoughts. “But Father has decided we will marry. Does it matter if I love him?”

Rhaegar purses his lips and a strange expression crosses his face, like he’s been reminded of someone, before it disappears. “Marriage is the union of two who love each other,” he says and lowers himself onto the bed so that he’s lying next to her. “You’ll not be happy if you wed someone you don’t love. Don’t you want to be _happy,_ Lya?”

Lyanna absolutely does. She wants to feel this way every day of her life, wants to come home to white-blonde hair and dusk-purple eyes and pretend this ~~love~~ thing they share isn’t a tragedy in the making, but…

“I can’t,” she says, slowly sitting up. “I’d like nothing more than to stay here with you forever, Rhaegar, but it’s not right. I cannot turn away from what my father asks of me.”

Rhaegar’s hands ghost around her waist. “Can’t you?”

No, she can’t. But it’s not like she hasn’t thought about it, not like she hasn’t considered it and mapped the idea on the back of her hand as if it’s an escape route and not just an innocent fantasy. More often than not, she spends her nights staring at the ceiling and thinking about what life might be like as Rhaegar’s wife, how that might feel—and usually, just when she’s about to fall asleep, the fragmented images of Elia Martell leak into her mind and cut into her thoughts with the haunting desperation of a half-dead woman.

Rhaegar hums. “Your father has agreed to marry you off—to Robert Baratheon, of all people—but you do not love him. Is that the life you want to live?”

“No. But it’s the one I have.”

Rhaegar huffs out a laugh. “I was only a little older than you are now when my father said he wished for me to marry Elia.” He shakes his head like it’s an annoying memory he can’t get out of his mind. “I’d never met her—the first time I even saw her was _months_ after that—but alliances had to be secured and the union of our Houses was the best way to do that.”

Lyanna trembles, uncomfortable in the way she always is when Rhaegar mentions Elia. “You say you never married out of love, but the way you look at her sometimes,” she mutters softly, “it’s as if you’re the only two in the room and—”

Rhaegar presses a finger to her lips, a smile on his face even though his eyes are cold and displeased. “Shush, Lya,” he says firmly. “Do you really plan to talk about my wife while we’re together like this?” He snorts. “I hope not.”

A rose-pink warmth settles on her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, leaning into his arms. “It’s just that sometimes I see you two together, and there is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy around you. Like the gods made her, just for you.”

Lyanna doesn’t think she’s exaggerating. Elia Martell is the epitome of beauty, of all that’s honeyed and sweet and _nice_ in this world. The way she tilts her chin outwards, manages to look down on even Rhaegar despite her small height, holds her body like it’s a glass sculpture crafted by architects and she has to be careful not to break the starlit shards of crystals inside her—it’s the regality of a princess born and made to rule. And with Rhaegar by her side, she becomes even more otherworldly, shines golden like a goddess. Lyanna is sure that Rhaegar loves Elia Martell desperately, no matter what he says, no matter how potent the bitter resentment in his eyes becomes whenever he talks about her, and on nights that Lyanna isn’t choking on her own lust as her body melts into a puddle of resignation on Rhaegar’s lap, she lets herself sympathize.

Rhaegar makes a strange sound at the back of his throat. “I don’t believe in that,” he says.

“What _do_ you believe in?”

He licks his lips and stares at her with the hunger of the wolves back in Winterfell, and Lyanna has about two seconds to think, _Maybe I shouldn’t have said it that way_ before he grasps her wrist, pulls her to her feet, and holds her against his chest.

“I believe in _this,”_ he breathes. “I believe in _us.”_

Lyanna looks into his eyes—his cold, cold eyes—and lets herself believe in them too.

x.x.V.x.x

Rhaegar’s disposition of careful indifference is often bothersome. Like when Lyanna tells him that she is absolutely in love with him and all he does is smile as if he knows something she doesn’t—it’s _infuriating_. It makes her want to scream, makes her want to grab his shoulders and shake him and ask, _don’t you love me too?_ but she knows better than that. And of course there are times that they’re alone, those rare, precious moments where there is nothing but the two of them kissing under the heavenly light of all their sins and he _looks_ as if he loves her even though he doesn’t say that he does, but _still_.

Some nights he’s everything she wants and _more._ Other nights he shrivels up into nothing but a small-gapped doorway into an illusionary world where she hasn’t become so disenchanted by the reality of the way things are and she doesn’t slide her fingers down Rhaegar’s linen sheets with covetous hands, wishing against hope that they could be hers.

_Theirs._

She wonders, sometimes, if this is how Elia Martell feels whenever her husband comes into their bed still smelling of ice-blue flowers and Winterfell.

x.x.V.x.x

Lyanna loves her brother boundlessly, like a comet tearing open the sky, with a ferocity that burns at the faintest touch of her tainted hands, as if he’ll disappear, fade away into particles of incendiary light if she doesn’t keep his name so close to her heart, and she knows that Ned feels the same way. His affection isn’t as open-mouthed and loud as Lyanna’s, but it’s still there in the way his fingertips had boiled with undeniable rage when she’d come home, months ago, with Rhaegar’s promises still written in ink on her neck. He’d known then that something had changed and he knows now that things will never be the same, can see in her eyes the indecision that lifts and bleeds into the cold certainty that this is not the life she wants to live.

(“Robert will never remain faithful, Lya,” she remembers.

Rhaegar isn’t faithful either, but Lyanna doesn’t like to think about how Elia Martell must feel as she lies in bed alone, wondering where her husband could _possibly_ be in the middle of the night, so she doesn’t.)

Yet she’ll do anything for Ned. She’ll cut into her throat with a silver knife and offer him her wine-red blood if he asks her to. She’ll climb out the golden river of her own soul and put a fresh-cut anemone in its stead and pretend that it’ll somehow make up for the loss. _If only he asks her to._ He doesn’t, of course. Ned has never asked her for anything, not for as long as she can remember, providing her with a stark contrast against the memories she has of Rhaegar, of having everything taken from her yet still feeling whole despite it. The feeling makes her uncomfortable, crawls into bed with her and cries tears of stars and anguish under the burnt thought of _family, Lya, we could be family._ When she wakes up her tongue is always coated with blood, and she wonders if she’ll ever get some actual sleep one day.

(She knows that she won’t, but every time Rhaegar kisses her like she’s the only thing that matters, she starts to care a little bit less.)

x.x.V.x.x

Rhaegar is a spring breeze that tickles her in just the right places. His mind is made of knives drenched in holy water and his skin is a watercolor painting of a transparent battlefield. There is none of Ned’s frozen, wintertime coolness in Rhaegar, only the burnt aftertaste of a dragon’s fury and the living proof that innocence itself can be tainted.

x.x.V.x.x

Snow falls delicately on Rhaegar’s light clothing. He kicks at the ground, pouting like a miserable teenager who’s been told that their dessert-at-three-in-the-morning privileges have been taken away. Lyanna knows it’s because of the coldness that’s always wrapped around Winterfell. It doesn’t bother her, but to someone born and raised in the warm blanket of the South, it must be absolutely freezing.

“This place is too cold, Lya,” he grumbles. “How do you _stand_ it?”

Lyanna stifles the giggle bubbling up in her throat. “It is unusually cold this year,” she admits. “But you get the chills too easily, Rhaegar. If you truly wish to be with me, you should at least get used to Winterfell.”

She’s teasing him, of course, but Rhaegar’s shoulders tremble anyway—perhaps from the cold, perhaps from the implications of what she’s said. “Nobody should have to get used to this ridiculous wind,” he mumbles. “I much prefer our room in King’s Landing.” He looks at her, an amused smile on his lips. “Don’t you, Lya?”

What she wants to say is _I don’t, that’s the same room your wife sleeps in, of course I don’t,_ but saying no to Rhaegar is a significantly more dangerous thing than lying to him. He reminds her of an open sea in that aspect: quiet, on the surface, like a pristine pool of water in the morning when there’s no disturbance, no movement, nothing other than the pretty fluttering of a springtime breeze, but still raging with the underlying allusion to a vicious storm of anger with swirling winds and mile-high waves. But he wasn’t always like that. Lyanna remembers the first time they met—when he came with his wife to visit Winterfell—and he kissed her hand like it was the most fragile thing he’d ever seen, ever felt, ever had the pleasure of touching. She also remembers how things have been lately, how he’s not so careful with her anymore, treating her less and less like a delicate flower, and it’s so much different from how things used to be that Lyanna can nearly see the line between what was and what is. When he kissed her months ago, it was soft, like a rose in summer, slow and pretty, as if he wanted to cherish the moment forever. Now, however, it’s with an urgency she doesn’t understand, like he’s trying to catch up with something that only he can see, and Rhaegar has always lived life like he was running out of time, so it’s nothing _too_ new, but the ice-cold apprehension in her stomach, coiling like a spring waiting to be sprung, the way something unspoken glimmers from the depths of his eyes at times— _that_ is something she’s neither felt nor seen before.

“Of course,” she manages. Fishhooks dig into the corners of her mouth and pull her lips into a smile. “But it matters not where I am, Rhaegar, so long as we’re together.”

Rhaegar grins, the glint in his eyes nothing but soft adoration. Murk clears from his eyes as they brighten, like the purple of dawn lifting as the sun slowly shines through smoky clouds. “You must be feeling particularly poetic today, Lya,” he teases. “Have you missed me that much?”

“I miss you lots,” Lyanna confirms. “I wish I didn’t have to miss you. I wish we could be together for always.”

“We could,” Rhaegar replies gently. “We could, if only you let us.” He glances away from her briefly, stares up at the sky, then returns his purple gaze back to her chocolate eyes. “But you won’t. You’re stubborn like that, and it is becoming more bothersome than endearing. _Why,_ Lya?”

“Because I am scared, Rhaegar,” Lyanna hisses through her teeth, suddenly feeling a lot colder. But it isn’t so much the wind that makes her shiver as it is the look in Rhaegar’s eyes: dark and demanding and fiercely frozen. “Because the North _remembers_. And even the South will not stand by you. Robert will never allow you to have me without a fight.”

“If Baratheon wishes to start a war—”

“Gods, Rhaegar,” Lyanna cuts him off, letting her desperation leak into her voice, “don’t you get it? He could kill you. He _will_ kill you.”

And that is perhaps the most frightening thing to think of. It’s not the look on Ned’s face when he finds out, not the shape of her father’s mouth as he orders his men to fight, and not even the dusty image of Elia Martell and her children, suffering for a sin that isn’t theirs. It’s _Rhaegar_ , dead, the wine-red rubies of his armor glinting on the ground as Robert towers over him, his hammer soaked in blood, a smile on his face as he tells the Seven Kingdoms that their prince is gone, that he’s seized the Iron Throne and ~~stolen~~ saved Lyanna from Rhaegar’s ~~loving~~ greedy hands. Just envisioning it makes her want to disappear in the soft fabric of Rhaegar’s black cloak, shivering from either terror or the ruthless shadows that cross Rhaegar’s face.

“I’ll not fall to the likes of _him_ ,” Rhaegar spits decidedly, anger turning his cheeks pink, but it doesn’t take long for the wrinkle of his eyebrows to smoothen out and the harsh lines surrounding his mouth to disappear. His hands stroke Lyanna’s hair idly, pale peach contrasting against chocolate brown locks. “Why don’t you understand? It’s you, Lyanna. It’s always been you.”

(But why not Elia Martell, the girl with sand in her bones and fire in her lungs, his _wife_ , or even Cersei Lannister, that flame-haired woman whose heart pumps lioness blood through her veins? Why _Lyanna_ of all people?)

“And the princess of Dorne?” she asks quietly. “What of your wife and two children?”

Rhaegar stills. The strands of his hair flutter in the wind. “Don’t bring Elia into this,” he hisses through his teeth, suddenly inexplicably angry. “ _Don’t_ say her name. You don’t—I can’t—"

Lyanna purses her lips. Frustration spreads across Rhaegar’s expression like a deadly disease, turning the sclera of his eyes dark. She hates it. Rhaegar’s eyes are meant to be bright purple magnificence. The sight of them being tainted, least of all because of her, ignites the half-forgotten feeling of self-disappointment that’s been semi-dormant inside her for so long.

“Alright,” she interjects in a soft tone of voice, swallowing thickly. “I won’t.”

The look Rhaegar gives her is nothing short of agonizingly displeased, but Lyanna holds her breath in her throat and smiles anyway.

x.x.V.x.x

She doesn’t know what will happen ~~when~~ if Robert ever catches them as they are now, locked in a tight embrace of hating and loving, her lips cold like Winterfell against Rhaegar’s fire-burnt demand.

But it doesn’t really matter, does it? She still loses.

She always loses, in the end, but it’s only natural. After all, the gods tend to hate the sinner more than the sin, don’t they?

x.x.V.x.x

There’s a delicate clarity that’s hidden within the process of dying.

It is, perhaps, once the pain bleeds away into numb aching that she can understand why she’s done what she’s done. Maybe she really did love Rhaegar, in some shape or form, and maybe, in another world, it would’ve been enough to be young and in love, but in this world, it’s not. She thinks about Rhaegar’s soft smile, the blood-red rubies that decorate his armor, the light that shines from the back of his eyes, the flower-pink blush of his cheeks in the ice of Winterfell, and _it’s not enough_. She’s still gasping for air, the makeshift bed stone-cold beneath her, the faint sound of a baby’s cries ringing in her ears. _It’s never enough._ Not with Rhaegar, at least. Nothing is enough with Rhaegar, not the heart she’s carved out of her chest, not the family she’s betrayed, and not the life she’s thrown away.

(Insatiable, she thinks. _Ravenous.)_

Though, reflecting on all her feelings and emotions, she realizes she fell more into a trap than fell in love. The look in Rhaegar's eyes when he looked at her had hardly been anything but hungry and smug, and perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that he did, somehow, care for Lyanna, but what they shared was not love, was not anything more than an obsessive desire, and she can see that now.

(“You’re either foolish or lying to yourself,” Ned once told her. “I think you’re seeing nothing further than what you want to see.”

“I don’t get it,” Lyanna admitted.

Ned smiled, sad and wistful. “You never get it, Lya,” he whispered. “That’s the whole point.”)

x.x.V.x.x

The first time she met Rhaegar, she thought he was a god. Perhaps he’d been the devil instead.


End file.
